How to Make White People Laugh

by Negin Farsad

  What are the odds! An earthquake right after I get off the plane? The earthquake happened right as I was about to go through customs. But as I walked in the lights went out and everybody started randomly running, so I started randomly running… The airport smelled like sweat… and enriched uranium.2 It was the first night of the World Cup and some exotic country was playing another exotic country and airport staff was all up on that shit. The TVs went blank from the earthquake just as a ball was about to make a point but probably didn’t, because there are no points in soccer-football.

  Customs is a very intimate process in which the cultural police feel you up and go through your suitcase to find contraband. Getting searched was nerve-racking for me because I was, indeed, carrying contraband. Of course, in the United States we think of contraband as “drugs and weapons,” but in Iran, my contraband was Jay Z albums and Vogue magazines. I really wanted to show my cousins that I was a hip purveyor of taste. Smuggling in this media was important in maintaining my family reputation as “the cool American cousin.”

  The lights had come back on, but the earthquake had rattled the cultural police, and they started phoning it in on the searches. As a result, the Sisters—or the female police force—didn’t fondle my person too heavily (I had a CD tucked in my jacket). When it got to my suitcase, they asked me where I was from. I told them I was traveling from New York, they asked me a few more friendly questions. Apparently, my odd almost-American-clearly-bilingual-but-weird accent in Farsi was the most adorable thing. The accent got me free pastries and free trinkets, and in this case, it made me a successful smuggler of the complete Jay Z oeuvre.

  The third thing I noticed was no less than one thousand family members waiting outside and shouting from all directions. Get this: They were ululating. Don’t get me wrong: I live in the East Village of New York City, and I understand howling boys looking for a last-minute hookup before the bars close at 4 A.M. But what I didn’t understand was that my family ululated out of elation because they were so happy to see me. If you’ve never made an entrance to ululation, I’m really sad for you. It is a singular wonder! I’m talking a bunch of auntlike ladies ululating at the top of their lungs, with a bunch of uncle types clapping and whistling in support. I don’t see this kind of joy on display in my regular life, which makes me think I’m doing regular life all wrong.

  Of course, that “cool American cousin” feeling quickly dissipated when they fully saw what I was wearing. There’s a special feeling of embarrassment you get when you walk into a crowd of fashion forward chadors and you’re wearing a bedsheet. I hadn’t even cut off the tags. The horror.

  I was there for my cousin’s wedding. We were the same age, but I was a little nervous about hanging out with her and her sister. My life was different. I dated boys, drank alcohol, went to brunch, and actively took advantage of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” None of these are huge in Iran, if we’re being honest. I worried that out of the American context, my cousins would consider me some kind of Iranian-American-slut-whore-hooker-prostitute, which, in New York we just call a Facebook friend.

  But in many ways, my fears were unwarranted, because Iranians have the Islamic Republic figured out. They know how to live within the confines of a repressive regime. This is not a people to feel sorry for, and in fact Iran isn’t the worst example of repression. Iranian women, for example, are a majority of college degree earners—that must not only make for lopsided college mixers, but it also means they end up being a meaningful chunk of the labor force. Iranian women can drive, unlike the ladies of Saudi Arabia. They can vote, they can go to libraries any time they want. There is a vibrant civic life in Iran. There are filmmakers, writers, and musicians. True, Taylor Swift will not be allowed to do a tour stop in Shiraz, but the image we might have of a bunch of sad Iranians crying that they can’t publicly buy Beyoncé’s feminist T-shirts, well, that’s just not true.

  It’s not true, in part because Iranians are somehow able to import nearly any kind of contraband. I wasn’t the only person bringing illegal music into the country. Everyone can get their hands on anything. Including alcohol. Lots of bootleg alcohol. My family aren’t big drinkers and they’re scaredy-cats, so they keep everything legal. But through friends of friends, I managed to get some bootleg gin. Did I get drunk on gin someone made in a bathtub? Yes. Yes I did. But you can also get regular beers and whatnot, smuggled in from Turkey. Everyone’s got a guy. It’s a lot like prohibition era United States, it’s like the roaring 1320s over there.

  Of course, I don’t mean to paint too rosy a picture. Repression is in the air. At one point I was walking down the street with an aunt and I started whistling. Not to brag, but I have a fairly remarkable whistle which would, if needed, beat anyone else’s whistle in a whistle-to-the-death-match scenario. A Lauryn Hill song popped into my head and I started whistling. Frankly, I was killing it when my aunt punched me in the arm. At first I thought she was shocked by my rock-hard whistling techniques. But it turned out she didn’t want me to get arrested by the cultural police for whistling a Western tune in public.

  I thought she was exaggerating. You can’t police the micro stuff! And they generally don’t. But there are occasions where they do. I was wearing a pair of sunglasses, a cheap plastic pair I got from a street vendor in New York for five dolla, five dolla! As I was walking down the street, a Sister, casually holding some sort of weapon, asked me to take off my glasses. She pointed out that they were “too fashionable.” Yes, I was literally stopped by the Fashion Police. Except in Iran the Fashion Police carry assault rifles. I was pissing my chador. I have never been stopped by a cop before, so I suddenly felt like I was a fugitive from the law. I told her I understood and put the glasses in my purse. Upside: My fashionable American self just can’t help but poke through. Downside: It’s illegal to be that fashionable in Iran.

  So the repression is real. But it’s different in different countries, and I implore you, I beseech you, I beg of you to learn the differences before making snap judgments about this region. And don’t wear sunglasses if you’re ever in Iran. Just squint it out—it’s not worth the hassle.

  My cousin was getting married to a man she had met at work. She is an architect, and so was her Iranian crush. They flirted, dated, he popped the question, she agreed, a union was formed. Some of you will be surprised to learn that this was not an arranged marriage and that they both had graduate degrees. There were no camels involved, there were no snake charmers, there was no fat gentleman flying around on a rug granting people wishes. It was a meet-cute, courtship, and wedding. They might as well have been living in Sheboygan, it was so normsies.

  But the wedding itself was cut straight from the traditional cloth of ancient Persia. Persian culture is what historians call “very old.” The ethnically Persian peoples have inhabited that area in some form or another since 1500 BC. Their control of the region ran the gamut from defensively running shit, to preeminently running shit, to being taken over and not really running shit, to sort of exercising influence and then maybe inadequately running shit. That’s just a little history lesson. One thing that has not changed, at least since I’ve been alive, is the wedding ritual.

  First, there’s the lamb sacrifice. I know this sounds barbaric, but it’s supposed to bring years of luck to the bride and groom, and they’ve really modernized the whole process. See, after slitting the lamb’s jugular vein, a national nonprofit that deals with the ritual sacrifice of lambs, which I believe is called The National Nonprofit that Deals with the Ritual Sacrifice of Lambs, is sent in to clean up any errant blood, collect the lamb, and distribute meaty lamb portions to families in need around the area.

  Then the ceremony. The bride and groom sit under a lacey thing as an elder—usually some kind of scholar—makes wise remarks about marriage. The elder ladies of both families rub blocks of sugar over the heads of the bride and groom representing eternal sweetness in
the marriage. The I dos follow a hilarious patter. The bride is asked if she is willing to marry the groom and she sits there silently while the elder ladies chant something like “The bride is out picking flowers.” The bride is asked again if she’ll marry the groom, and again she sits in silence. Then more chanting from the ladies: “The bride is out at the market.” This happens a few more times, just to keep the groom in a state of fake panic until finally she accepts. It’s the kind of call-and-response ceremony that would make a Baptist church blush.

  After the ceremony comes the reception. Everyone is dressed to the nines. Colognes and perfumes are intermingling in a dangerous potpourri of smells. And before the food even comes out, the Iranians are dancing. Grannies are dancing, little kids are dancing, the groom’s childhood dentist is dancing, these people can’t stop dancing. You know the stuffy weddings with the seating chart and the designated time for speeches and gentle waltzes? This is nothing like that. These people are in an eternal do-si-do of their own making. The bride and groom are in the middle of the room, hands in the air like they’re at the top of a roller coaster (and like they don’t care), squealing with delight and just a touch of uncertainty because this is the beginning and who knows what will come next?

  The wedding formed the climax of this trip to Iran. This was my first adult trip where I saw and understood the cycle of life as my family had lived it. I had carried so much guilt on this trip. The exchange rate made everything so cheap for my American dollar and I felt guilt. Putting on the hijab was such a funny novelty for me, but I knew I would go back to wearing my regular clothes, and I felt guilt. The ability to travel—generally without visas and suspicion—came so easily to me, and I felt guilt. I couldn’t fathom the idea that my family lived full and happy lives. How could people feel happy without iPods and easily accessible beer? How could they be fulfilled without regime change?

  True, people in Iran are waiting for regime change. But while my cousin waited for regime change she had found Mr. Right, she became an architect, found career success, and had a child. And I carried a guilt that seemed only to condescend to her. As an American, I sit at home, watch the news, and make a series of assumptions about other countries. But news stories don’t form the picture. They only give us license to feel some kind of political and economic superiority. And I did. On this trip, at this most joyous of weddings, I found that it’s a dangerous superiority that swallows the three-dimensionality of their lives. That my guilt is useless and belittling. That the Americanness of my opinions mattered not more, but just as much as anyone else’s. The outlines of a responsibility began to take hold: I have to talk about them like they’re people, not news stories.

  CHAPTER 8

  Where My Staplers At?

  Spoiler alert: I graduated from college. I wore a skirt that was too short under my graduation gown and fully took advantage of the last time I could make out with a collegiate stranger. (Except for the time that I went back to college three years later for a sketch comedy group reunion, but that doesn’t really count because I think he was more into the eighty-year-old British tea-time character I had been playing and not the real me.) I left Cornell and immediately went to Paris, where I thought my charms would land me very important work. Allow me to condense that experience into an easily digestible bullet point montage.

  The Classic Postcollegiate European Experience Told in Montage

  I moved in with my friend Charmaine and pranced around Paris trying to emanate a certain, I don’t know what, let’s call it je ne sais quoi.

  I was hired to be a tourist shop trinket salesman at Montmartre, the hilltop home of the Sacré-Coeur—the kind of romantic destination where you could picture Pepe Le Pew hitting on you.

  I was apparently a terrible trinket salesman, so I was fired. Well, it was a probationary period so I like to think, We just weren’t a good fit for each other, or rather, On n’ira pas ensemble.

  I then got a job teaching English to a bunch of businessmen (and one businesswoman). I was apparently the toast of the English center, because my California accent was in high demand. This was the only time that my accent has ever been a professional asset.

  I made out with a bunch of French dudes, including one who had Tourette’s syndrome. In French, even Tourette’s comes off as ooh-la-la.

  Charmaine and I always bought cheap wine that we put in the freezer so it was tolerable enough to drink. This invention became known as “the French Wine slushy.” We would not go on to profit from this remarkable creation; however, it got us tanked on the cheap.

  We learned how to speak French le pretty fucking well.1

  I got myself a little French pseudoboyfriend. Charmaine got his best friend as a French pseudoboyfriend. Keep it in la famille, as they say.

  I got into a bar fight with a nutjob2 who thought my boyfriend was stealing her beer. She hit me in the head with a bottle while I stood there. She then climbed on a stool to hit me again. I learned that when confronted with violence, I totally do nothing and just get beat up. I got stitches. But they were French stitches, so they were very chic.

  I learned that the French have their own intense racial hierarchies that revolve around their former colonial relationships with North and West African countries. I also learned that racism and bigotry flourish in countries other than the United States. Viva la France!

  My work visa ran out and I went to London, where I thought my co-English speakers would immediately hire me to do something very important.

  I ended up waitressing. Was I at a really cute and totally British pub? No. Was I at a really cute and totally British shoppe? No. I was waiting tables at a Pizza Hut near Victoria Station.

  I learned that the British order shrimp on pizza, like psychopaths.

  I made out with four dudes named Simon. Four.

  I learned that the British drink too much.

  I gained fifteen pounds. But in Britain they weigh themselves in “stones,” and fifteen pounds is only about one stone. So when you put it that way, it’s almost like I lost weight.

  My closest friends in London—Julie and Florence—were French. I ended up speaking even better French, in London.

  I discovered that the roommates I found in the English equivalent of Craigslist were heroin addicts. As a sort of, by the book American, this freaked me out.

  I got fed up with the shrimp pizza and heroin-addicted roommates, so I went back to the United States to live with my parents for two months.

  Before I left my roommates, I angrily emptied their shampoo bottles to teach them a lesson about doing drugs. I then felt guilty and left my own shampoo behind as a backup. Why should a heroin addict’s hygiene suffer? You can be strung out but still smell good.

  I worked at a DVD rental store that one of my best friends, Jennie, was managing. She admitted years later that I was a terrible employee. She also admitted it while I was a terrible employee.

  I moved to New York City.

  Finding a job in New York City is a lot like walking through the desert without shoes on, listening to only the audio track of the movie Gigli on your earbuds, except your earbuds have a mild acid on them that is slowly burning your ear skin, and you see a mirage in the distance that would have kept you going if it wasn’t for the fact that the mirage is Donald Trump and he’s giving a speech on foreign policy. That’s what an NYC job hunt is like: rather unpleasant.

  I had a brief stint as a curatorial assistant for a historical collection of Revolutionary, early national, antebellum, and Civil War–era ephemera. What is Civil War ephemera? It’s anything from a note that a gentleman wrote to a bureaucrat, or a note that a farmer wrote to a gentleman, or a note that a military man wrote another military man, or on very rare occasions a note that a farmer wrote to a military man. On even rarer occasions, it would be a note that a woman would write to a farmer to whom she was betrothed. (Betrothed was slang for “engaged” back then.)

  Mostly these notes would read like this:

  Dea
r Sir,

  Upon the Ordinance of the Fifth established parish of the Fourth county line within the Third Lunar passing of the Spring Equinox please be forewarned and please generally note in a form other than a warning that the meaZurements of this Parcel of Land have been calkulated upon the aforementioned Boundaries and have ThereFore been totaled at the very sum of 3 hectares by 4 hectares. The easement is recognized as One-Half of a cattle’s width.

  Yours truly in land speculation,

  Sir Howard Beauregard Braintree

  If you were riveted by this note, if you have found yourself saying, “Don’t stop there, I want to hear more about the length and width of this parcel of land,” then you would have been really jealous of me! Because I got to read ephemera like that all day long.

  What does a historical collection need on an average day? It needs blurbs! Lots of blurbs! So I would look at a note from a general to, let’s say, another general, during a skirmish, battle, or clash (all very different), and I would do a little historical research around the note. Not to brag, but the research involved one to two steps beyond Wikipedia. Then I would write a blurb! I wrote some great fucking blurbs up in that historical collection. My blurbs would make you feel anything ranging from begrudgingly interested to remarkably indifferent.

  When I think back to this office, the words “children of the corn” come to mind. The people who helmed this collection were… a collection unto themselves. On my first day there, the boss walked in with a big box of donuts. I thought, How nice, he’s bringing donuts for everyone on my first day. But he held on to that box, marched right into his office, and polished off those two dozen donuts, by himself. And he was skinny. On my first meeting in his office, I saw candy everywhere. M&M’s on bookshelves, Skittles in desk filing cabinets. The man had the organs of a Butterfinger.